Domestic Spying Revelations, 40 Years Before Snowden

In 1971, a group of burglars broke into an FBI office and stole boxes of documents that revealed the federal agency's secret spying on dissident groups. Decades later, some of those burglars have revealed themselves to former Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger, who wrote the original story about the break-in and FBI spying back in 1971. Medsger joins us to talk about the people behind the break-in and the impact of what they found. And we'll consider the changes in the country and the government in the more than 40 years between the release of those FBI files and the recent leaks by Edward Snowden.

Host: Michael Krasny

Guests:

Betty Medsger, author of "The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover's Secret FBI," former Washington Post reporter who initially covered Hoover's spying and former journalism department chair at San Francisco State University

John Raines, one of the burglars who broke into the FBI office in 1971, along with his wife, Bonnie